Shadow pricing market access: A trade benefit function approach

Appropriate assessment of the social value of market access is at the core of a broad range of inquiries in trade research. We propose a new approach based on a trade benefit function to obtain the shadow value of net imports. Our approach is in keeping with well-established trade welfare measurement techniques, for the trade benefit function is dual to the standard trade expenditure function. This dual relation further allows for a direct retrieval of the shadow values of net imports from the trade benefit function. The operationality of our approach is demonstrated in a series of applications and simulations.